Globally known for their rigorous and effective approach to product innovation, Professors Peter Boatwright and Jonathan Cagan collaborate in corporate consulting, research on innovation processes and tools, teaching and leading innovation teams, and speaking engagements on the topic of innovation. Because innovation is a process that incorporates multiple perspectives, their executive sessions are jointly taught.

Peter Boatwright is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tepper School of Business and Jonathan Cagan is the George Tallman and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. In the Carnegie Mellon tradition, Boatwright also has an appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Cagan in the Schools of Design and Computer Science.

Professors Boatwright and Cagan are the authors of Built to Love – Creating Products that Captivate Customers, released in September, 2010. Boatwright and Cagan actively consult with companies ranging from Fortune 100 to entrepreneurial start-ups, with a focus on product strategy and innovation as well as brand strategy. Their formal approaches to opportunity identification and problem solving have been integrated into a diverse range of companies including International Truck/Navistar, Apple, P&G, Dormont Manufacturing, Bayer MaterialScience, Respironics, Nissan, MSA, Whirlpool, Lubrizol, Kennametal, Alcoa, RedZone Robotics, DesignAdvance Systems, New Balance, Industrial Scientific, and Giant Eagle.

Boatwright and Cagan co-lead executive training sessions and practice-based courses at the university. They co-teach an annual course on new product innovation and have co-run other product strategy courses, resulting in multiple patents for corporate sponsors. They also actively collaborate on research in innovation methods and have co-authored a previous book (The Design of Things to Come: How Ordinary People Create Extraordinary Products). Between their consulting, corporate projects, and innovation courses they have advised over 200 product innovation teams.

Prof. Boatwright’s expertise and teaching focuses on innovation, new product marketing and brand strategy, and marketing research methods. Through research, Boatwright has both developed new statistical methods as well as additional theories of consumer behavior, spanning qualitative and quantitative methodologies, studying consumer response, product assortment, and early product research methods. Dr. Boatwright has an M. S. in Statistics from University of Wisconsin, and both his M.B.A and Ph. D are from University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Boatwright’s scholarly articles appear in leading research journals in the fields of marketing, statistics, and management.

Prof. Cagan is an expert in product development and innovation methods for early stage product development, computational design, and cognitive mechanisms for innovation. Both his design methods and computer-based design research have been applied in a variety of industries. He co-founded and served as Chief Technologist of DesignAdvance Systems, Inc., a company focused on developing CAD software for the early synthesis processes. Cagan has authored over 150 publications. He is the co-author of a third book (Creating Breakthrough Products: Innovation from Product Planning to Program Approval). He co-founded and co-directs the Masters in Product Development program at Carnegie Mellon. Cagan has 5 issued and 2 pending patents, is a licensed Professional Engineer, and is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Cagan received his Ph. D. from the University of California at Berkeley after working for the Eastman Kodak Company. He has been on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon since 1990.